Tuesday 20 August 2013 02.00 EDT
First published on Tuesday 20 August 2013 02.00 EDT

The way water is managed in the UK is beginning to change, as we edge towards a new era of collaboration, with different sectors and industries working together to develop a more robust and resilient infrastructure.

It's a change born of necessity, as Britain faces up to new demands for water created by an ever-growing population, while at the same time dealing with the paradox of periods of severe droughts, interspersed with spells of diluvian rainfall.

Add to this dwindling public finances, which can ill-afford to pay for the flood defences parts of the country so desperately needed – let alone new reservoirs – and as Mike Cook, head of water resources at Anglian Water, says: "Collaborative planning seems to be a sensible way to go."

According to Peter Start, a director at real estate consultants Savills, this collaborative approach is already taking shape on various levels. Start has a special interest in rural issues, working on estates covering millions of acres.

"The use of water is an important part of the advice we supply to clients," he says. "The impact of water and water stewardship is something we've seen change dramatically over the past 25 years."

Start has worked with farmers and estate owners engaged in collaborative approaches to creating reservoirs. "These are then used to feed water to a number of different farming businesses," he says.

He's also seen new partnerships developed in areas of the UK at risk of flooding, with local authorities, landowners and communities working together to maintain and strengthen sea walls, filling the gaps left by the absence of state funding.

Normally, he says, there would have been objections from one party or another to elements of the project, but this is different. "They've decided that this is the best way forward to deal with flood risk," he says.

This collective approach is also being adopted on a much larger scale, explains Cook.

Following the last major drought in 2010/11, Anglian Water drew up plans with Severn Trent Water and the Canal and River Trust to use the canal network to move water to depleted reservoirs. "It was worked up into a study which could be implemented as soon as water quality risks are fully understood and managed," he says.

An even bigger scheme is Water Resources East Anglia (WREA), a multi-sector approach to future water management covering a vast area stretching from the Humber down to London, and from the east coast across to the Midlands. Cook explains that the project is looking at a host of issues, such as how to manage climate change, use water more sustainably and create a greater resilience to drought.

A third project, developed in association with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), is looking at new ideas around managing a major river catchment area in north Norfolk.

In the UK, the private sector serves the water needs of more people then anywhere in the EU, says Dr Gemma Cranston, programme manager at CPSL, with 90% of the population relying on private companies for water, and 93% for sewerage.

So, she argues, doesn't it make sense to find financial and governance mechanisms that incentivise the private sector to invest more in water-catchment management?

The ground-breaking project is bringing together a range of different stakeholders, including the water industry, agriculture, industry and regulators, to investigate new ways to plan and finance the demand for water.

"It's about coming up with different ways of managing concerns over water stress and scarcity," says Cook. "Agriculture is certainly very concerned about the impact of climate change and drought, so what we are looking at is options of working together to create new upstream resources."

The catchment scheme is one of two "lighthouse projects" being run by CPSL, with the other addressing the flip side of the coin: flooding. Over 300,000 business premises in the UK and five million homes are currently at risk, yet state funding to protect them has all but dried up.

The project, which will be set up in the east of England, will look at new multi-sector approaches to urban flood management, with an emphasis on the Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDs), a method championed by the Coalition.

Instead of simply channelling water away, which often overloads traditional drains during particularly heavy rainfall, SuDs uses more natural systems, such as ponds, reed beds and wetlands areas, to collect and filter water, while also providing new habitats for wildlife.

It too will bring together a broad range of different groups – including civil engineers, city councils, drainage boards, developers, and both land and home owners – to investigate different ways to plan and implement these schemes, as well as, importantly, overcome the perennial problem of who actually foots the bill.

Cranston is excited that both projects offer organisations from different sectors the chance to work together and develop innovative strategies for water management that can then be tested in some of the UK's driest, yet most flood-threatened, areas of the country.

The findings will be made public next year, and although they have been developed on a regional level, Cranston is confident these projects will be both scalable and replicable across the whole UK.

"You need to protect and secure your supply of water," she adds. "And it's in everybody's interest to start coming up with joint solutions."

This content is brought to you by Guardian Sustainable Business in association with the Anglian Water and the University of Cambridge. Produced by Guardian Professional to a brief agreed and paid for by the Anglian Water and the University of Cambridge. All editorial controlled and overseen by the Guardian.